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The Angels send Cory Rasmus (0-0, 0.00 ERA in 1 inning this season) to the hill against the Dodgers’ newly-acquired Matt Latos (4-7, 4.48 ERA). Latos has a 3-3 record with a 2.96 ERA in his last seven starts after coming off the DL where he’d been recovering from an inflamed knee. In fact, as Eric Stephen says at True Blue LA, Latos has had two different seasons in four months this year.

If Rasmus’s name seems familiar, it’s because he’s the younger brother of Colby Rasmus, who’s an outfielder for the Astros now but had previous stints with the Cardinals and Blue Jays.

Kershaw is scheduled to pitch after two scratches with a sore hip. He still has his 29-inning scoreless streak. His opponent will be rookie Andrew Heaney, who’s been everything the Angels (and Dodgers) hoped he would be when he was traded from the latter to the former for Howie Kendrick. In his first six starts this season he’s gone 5-0 with a 1.79 ERA.

Let’s hope Albert Pujols doesn’t come up in a spot where he can do damage. Lifetime he’s hit .455 against Kershaw and has a .586 on-base percentage in 29 plate appearances.

Clayton Kershaw brings his hopefully-comfortable hip and his 29-inning scoreless streak to bear against the Angels’ Hector Santiago, who’s 7-4 with a 2.43 ERA. Santiago had a rough outing in his last game but had a 1.13 ERA over his previous five starts.

Believe it or not, the Angels have always given Kershaw trouble (relatively speaking). He’s 2-2 with a 3.76 ERA against them; that’s the highest ERA he has against any team he’s faced more than three times.

There will probably be moves later in the day to get to 25 players on the active roster, and there might even be another transaction or two. Who knows?

The Dodgers send Clayton Kershaw to the mound tonight nursing a 29-inning scoreless streak and admiring a July in which he won three of his first four starts with an ERA of 0.27. His opponent will be Jesse Chavez, who is 5-10 but has a 3.45 ERA. His last start was pretty bad, though: he gave up four runs in three-plus innings against the Giants.

There’s late word that the Dodgers-Marlins trade of Matt Latos and Michael Morse to the Dodgers for prospects may be falling apart over medical issues. Stay tuned.

Here’s an interesting note which may or may not be taken as true (that’s why they’re called rumors): the Dodgers may listen to trade offers for Yasiel Puig. That’s the hook for the entire post, and there’s not much else there other than what we already knew: the team is unlikely to give up either Seager or Urias but it wants/needs starting pitching. The author thinks it unlikely they’d move Puig, and in fact the same site reportedtwo days ago that the team had assured him he wasn’t on the block. However, that same day Ken Gurnick of MLB reported there had been no such assurances.

I can’t see trading Puig. He’s an excellent outfielder with a lot of potential upside and he’s cheap. He’s being paid $4.5M this year and the Dodgers control his future for three more years for just $19.5M. That’s less than one Crawford-year.

In other trade news of note within the division, the Rockies traded Troy Tulowitzki to the Blue Jays for Jose Reyes and three pitching prospects. Since neither team needed a shortstop, why they swapped them must have had more to do with money (Tulo’s owed $113.7M over the next five years) than anything else. None of the other three teams in the division have made any deals yet, at least not ones made public. The next time we see the Angels they’ll have old friend Shane Victorino with them, as he was traded by the Red Sox today.

In tonight’s game it will be Brett Anderson (5-5, 3.33 ERA) going for the Dodgers against his former team, which trots out ace Sonny Gray (10-4, 2.30 ERA). Anderson says and the team agrees that his Achilles tendon is fine now after causing him to leave his last start early. Gray has cooled off some recently. He’s 2-1 with a 3.95 ERA and .232 opponents’ batting average over his last six starts after going 5-3 with a 1.37 ERA and .190 opponents’ batting average over his previous nine starts.

New dad Zach Greinke shortens his 3-day paternity leave to pitch against the Mets’ Jacob deGrom. Both men pitched in the All-Star Game 10 days ago. Greinke is 9-2 with a 1.30 ERA and 117 Ks on the year; deGrom is 10-6 with a 2.18 ERA and 120 Ks. Greinke has a 43 2/3-inning consecutive scoreless streak going, while deGrom has given up 3+ earned runs only once since mid-May and has walked only nine men and struck out 83 in those 11 starts. He’s 7-2 over that span of games.

Righty Zach Lee, Los Angeles’ first-round pick in the 2010 Draft out of McKinney High School in Texas, will start for the Dodgers in his major league debut. He’s 7-3 with a 2.36 ERA in 12 starts this season for Triple-A Oklahoma City. Matt Harvey (8-7, 3.19 ERA) will start for the Mets. He’s walked at least four batters in each of his past three starts, two of them losses.

Scott Van Slyke made a heckuva play in the ninth inning of last night’s game:

A-Gon sits, Crawford gets his first start since his return from an extended stay on the DL this season, and Puig gets the day off. Puig’s about seven years younger than Ethier, so you’d think Andre would get the day off instead, but no. Mattingly works in mysterious ways.

In Zack Greinke’s absence (no official word yet from the Dodgers about any newborn child) rookie Ian Thomas starts for the Dodgers against Jon Niese of the Mets. Thomas came over from the Braves with Callaspo in return for Juan Uribe in a six-player deal at the end of May of this year. This will be his first major league start after 23 relief appearances. Niese has been excellent over the past two months; he’s gone at least seven innings in five of his last seven starts while compiling a 2.00 ERA. Overall he’s 5-8 with a 3.36 ERA.

This game has two of the most recognizable pitchers in baseball: Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers, who is 7-6 with a 2.68 ERA and a 20-inning scoreless streak, versus Bartolo Colon of the Mets, who’s 9-8 with a 4.68 ERA and a couple of really bad outings recently in which he gave up seven runs in two of his last five starts. Interestingly, Kershaw hasn’t had a decision against the Mets since July of 2012, but he’s 5-0 with a 1.58 ERA against them for his career.

Mike Bolsinger only pitched four innings in his last start for the Dodgers. That was the game that was eventually postponed by power outages in Washington. He’s 4-3 with a 3.04 ERA in his 14 starts this season. Julio Teheran only went 4 2/3 innings in his last start for the Braves, giving up 5 hits and 2 runs against the Cubs and not figuring in the decision.

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